Just 24 hours after a straight-set loss to No. 25 USC, the ASU volleyball team knew things weren’t about to get any easier.
“I like (the quick turnaround) because it allows the girls to have a day off,” ASU head coach Stevie Mussie said. “Sundays are important for them, it allows them to get their lives in order, it kind of keeps things regimented.”
The UCLA Bruins brought their top-10 national ranking into Tempe having won six of their last seven games and made it clear from the get-go that they were for real.
After taking advantage of a few Sun Devil mistakes, UCLA opened up an 8-3 lead, forced a timeout from Mussie and never looked back, handing the Devils a straight-set loss at Wells Fargo Arena on Saturday night.
The defeat was ASU’s sixth straight at home, and its fifth straight without winning a set.
“It’s that one kid, it’s that one kid that says enough is enough,” Mussie said, referencing what’s missing from the winning combination. “It’s going to be one of them, I know it will be ... somebody will say, ‘enough is enough, we’re winning this thing now.’ And that just hasn’t happened yet, but I think it will, we’re getting close, we’re getting real close.”
Following the timeout, the Sun Devils (9-17, 2-12 Pac-12) began to show the same heart as in recent hard-fought opening sets, fighting to take a 15-12 lead.
“My message (at the timeout), as always, was ‘you’re doing it to yourselves,’” Mussie said. “It’s like, we’ve got to just clean it up on our side, and the minute we do it’s 8-8, or it’s 18-18. When we are clean, we give ourselves a really good opportunity.”
ASU played some of the cleanest volleyball of its season in the first set — specifically following the timeout — but a .219 hit percentage wasn’t enough, as the Bruins (19-5, 10-4 Pac-12) pulled away to a 25-21 win in the opening frame.
The Sun Devils would end up with a respectable .181 mark, thanks to a slightly minimized number of errors at 19.
Despite dropping the first set, ASU didn’t go down quietly; they came out firing to start the second frame and open up a quick 7-3 lead, and sustained that level of play to hold a 10-7 advantage midway through.
However, the Bruins would once again have the last laugh, ripping off five of the next six and eventually winning the set by a margin of 25-22.
This feels familiar: ASU heads into the break down 2-0 after dropping the 2nd set 25-22.
— Jeff Griffith (@Jeff_Griffith21) November 6, 2016
The third set brought about more of the same, as the Sun Devils fought hard and hung with UCLA throughout the frame, only to be snuffed out for a 25-19 defeat.
“With this group of kids, they’re getting pretty good together,” Mussie said. “I like what we’re doing, they’re competing really hard right now and that I am a huge fan of.”
Leading the way for ASU was junior Oluoma Okaro with nine kills and four digs. Freshman setter Nicole Peterson also tallied an impressive 31 assists along with seven digs.
Following its two losses this weekend, ASU will take a road trip to the Pacific Northwest, where conference-leading No. 8 Washington and No. 23 Washington State await next weekend.
And, despite the struggles, Mussie’s message to her team entering the home stretch is nothing but positive.
“If we can refine a couple of things, like I told them, ‘you guys are in position to win three more matches this year,’” she said. “They’ve put themselves in a position to be in the conversation of being seventh, eighth or ninth.”
Reach the reporter at jeff.griffith21@asu.edu or follow @Jeff_Griffith21 on Twitter.
Like State Press Sports on Facebook and follow @statepressport on Twitter.
